Immortal
by writer-at-heart01
Summary: Bella and Edward have just gotten married when strange nightmares and mirages start to haunt Bella. As nightmares become reality, Bella must solve the mystery she has been thrust into before the key to immortality becomes the gateway to death....
1. Chapter 1

Something was unreal. That was all I knew. Everything was colored too vibrantly while at the same time being extremely dull. I had never seen so much red and that was the part that scared me about the dream. Despite the fact that I knew exactly where I was, I knew that everything was wrong. The walls had never been a bright, bloody red before and neither had the carpet, nor the bed, nor the trees outside the window. It wasn't just that everything was red but everything seemed to be oozing the color. _Bleeding _it.

I reached across the gigantic bed that I had always thought was superfluous, my hands frantically grasping for the comfort from the stone body that I knew was lying next to me, was always next to me. He had to be there.

My hand bumped against his cold skin and I pulled myself over to him, mentally begging him to wrap my arms around him. I needed him more than anything, especially in that moment. But he was strangely rigid against me, almost as though he didn't even feel me there next to him, clinging to him.

"Edward?" I whispered, worry flooding my voice.

I sat up, staring at him. His red eyes stared past me, unseeing and unblinking. He didn't seem to be breathing either but somehow I knew he was alive, just unwilling to move at the current moment. But more was wrong than just this though. He, too, was covered in the awful red that surrounded me. And there was something splattered against the bedspread, red still but darker. Almost like…like…dried blood.

I looked around the room, frantic. That's when I saw her, lying on the bed where I had been just moments ago. Her normally pale skin had an even more ghostly pallor to it and she was covered in blood. There was a frantic look on her sweet, heart-shaped face and her brown, thick hair was in a wild mass around her. Her body was in a weird position, her arms and legs tossed out at weird angles as though she had just fought for her life, and failed. Her neck was ripped up, the skin bloody and destroyed. And her eyes – they were the most unnerving of all. Unseeing and unblinking, just like the man's next to me, but also glossed over. Dead.

The girl was me.

***

There was nothing left for me to do but scream. I screamed like – not like I had just seen a ghost, but like I had just learned I was one.

I sat straight up in the bed and hurtled myself out of it, ripping the gold comforter off of me. Edward woke with a start but I had locked myself in the bathroom before he could say anything. I was going to be sick. I had been dead. That dream had felt more real than most things that happened to me when I was awake and I had been dead. Not just dead but murdered. And murdered at Edward's hand.

I dry heaved into the toilet, partially thankful that I didn't really unload my stomach into the porcelain bowl. I pushed myself off the ground on shaking legs and stared in the mirror, my worry-wrinkled forehead covered in beads of sweat. I was awake now and everything was back to normal. I didn't see any red around me except for Edward's red toothbrush which he had left lying by the sink.

Someone pounded on the door. "Bella? Bella, are you alright?" Edward yelled. "Bella, open the door. Please."

I leaned over the sink, trying to keep myself under control. The dream had been so terrifying, so real. Edward had killed me, ripped out my throat and drank my blood. I had been dead. Tears welled in my eyes and a sob escaped my throat.

"So help me god, Isabella Cullen, let me in," Edward called through the door.

I reached over and twisted the doorknob quickly so that it would unlock as I sank to the ground. Edward flew into the tiny bathroom. He stood frozen, puzzled, as he assessed the situation – me, on the ground, covered in sweat and freaked out, on the verge of tears.

"Oh, Bella, Bella," Edward cooed, sitting down and scooping me into his warm arms.

Warm? Wait a minute. In my dream, he had been cold, almost as cold as death but not. And that was something I had accepted in the dream, been used to. And his eyes had been red, not because everything in my dream had been red but because they just were red. Another thing I had accepted as if it were normal for someone to have red eyes. I pulled back and stared into Edward's emerald green eyes, not sure what to make of how my dream was now mixing with reality.

"Bella, love," Edward said soothingly, kissing my perspiration-covered forehead. "What's wrong?"

"Just…just a dream," I said with a tiny sob.

"Must have been one hell of a dream," Edward said, smiling his crooked smile.

I simply shuddered in his arms, too freaked out to do anything else.

"Want to tell me about it?" Edward asked, pulling me in tighter to him and kissing me, his lips moving against mine.

"You...you – I died," I said, deciding last second not to tell him that he was the reason I had been dead.

"You know I will never let anything happen to you," Edward said.

"Of course," I whispered.

"Now, let's get back to bed. You don't want to be tired for your finals tomorrow."

I groaned, momentarily forgetting my terrifying nightmare in replace for being terrified at the prospect of my finals I had tomorrow. The last grades I would get before going off to college. Of course, Edward would pass. I was pretty sure he was hiding from me the fact that he was a certifiable genius. I, on the other hand was, not.

"You know, Esme will be disappointed," Edward said with a chuckle as I snuggled into his arms. "I thought for a second we were going to be able to tell her you had morning sickness."

"Your mother knows that we're only eighteen, right?" I said. "That we haven't even graduated high school?"

"That doesn't mean she can't hope for a grandchild," Edward said. "Now, sleep, my love. And no more nightmares?"

I nodded. Little did I know, the nightmares were soon going to become reality.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

High school. A jail-sentence that I was almost done with. I was ready to start jumping up and down as I walked into Forks High School that day, the last day of school before graduation to take the last high school test I would even need to take. Despite the fact that I was still exhausted from waking up at two in the morning from an awful nightmare and the fact that I had tossed and turned all night, I was quite elated – and only half of it had to do with my perfect Edward walking beside me, his hand in mine.

People still stared at us as we walked by, scandalous looks on their faces like we had broken some sort of small-town, unwritten rule. T_hou shalt not get married until after you graduate, unless you have knocked up your girlfriend._ You'd think that after three months of us being married, people would stop looking at us like that but, alas, no. I was pretty sure that some people were still waiting for me to start showing even though I had made it utterly clear to one of my closest friends, Jessica, that I had married Edward for no other reason than the fact that I loved Edward with all my being. And of course, knowing Jessica, she had told the whole school. Obviously, that had been my goal by telling her, but still some people did not believe me.

I mean, sure, it was a little odd that we went and eloped just hours after Edward and his family moved back from their move to LA when Esme, my mother-in-law, decided that she liked the small-town life so much better. And, sure, Edward had broken up with me before the move but that was just because he didn't want me to have to deal with a long-distance relationship – which, truth be told, I would not have been able to handle. Still, we were both distraught for those six long months that we were apart and he proposed to me the second he got back. I wanted to be with Edward forever so I didn't care how old we were. Plus, with Edward's insane morals – which, admittedly, I shared – had been another deciding factor, though only a small part of it. So we had gone and gotten married, taking only his sister and my best friend Alice with us. And, ok, Charlie hadn't been so happy about it, but we were both eighteen so he couldn't exactly do anything about it.

Edward and I parted at my classroom, his lips brushing softly against mine. The whispers and silent gawks that we got would have made you think that we had started fornicating in the middle of the hall. While I would be the first to admit that we were somewhat of an oddity for the little town of Forks, Washington, I really wished people would get over it.

I slid into my seat in class, praising God that it was the last time I would be forced to sit in this seat. Alice sat at the desk next to me, bouncing up and down in her usual, hyper way. Her short, black spikes bounced up and down slightly around her pale face. Jessica turned around in the seat in front of me, her big, frizzy mass of curls all over the place, already ready to give me the latest gossip. Angela was silent as always sitting on my other side, but she had a sweet smile for me as always.

"You and my brother are quite sickening sometimes, you know?" Alice said jokingly.

"Because you and Jasper aren't enough to make someone with the strongest of stomachs vomit every single time he comes down to visit for the weekend," I said.

"We're no worse than Emmett and Rosalie," Alice whined. "They're the worst."

I smiled. Alice and Emmett were both Edward's adopted siblings, taken in when they were young by Carlisle and Esme. The Hale twins, Rosalie and Jasper, were dating Emmett and Alice respectively. Emmett and Rosalie, both having graduated last year, were like the older siblings I never had – Rosalie the snobbish sister and Emmett the huge teddy bear of a brother. They were both going to Washington State along with Jasper, who came down to visit Alice almost every weekend.

I groaned and put my head down on my desk, all of the sudden attacked with a roaring headache.

"Are you ok?" Angela asked softly.

"I'm fine," I told her at the same time as Jessica basically screamed, "Are you prego?!" Heads turned our way, all glaring at me disapprovingly. I fiddled with the gigantic ring on my finger, a hand-me-down from Edward's birth mother. Of course that would be the first assumption Jessica would make.

I shook my head. "Just tired – though that's the same thing Edward thought when I almost barfed into the toilet at two this the morning…"

"Are you sure it wasn't morning sickness?" Alice asked eagerly. She wanted me pregnant almost as much as Esme did.

"Do you people still not get that I'm only eighteen?" I said. "Between you and Esme – well, it's enough to make we want to get pregnant just so you guys stop bothering me. And I'm sure it wasn't. I just had a really bad dream."

"Must have been," Jessica said. "If it's a girl, name it after me, ok?"

I groaned again, thankful that the teacher had just came in the room and was passing out tests, telling us all to be quiet or else we would all get zeros. Only, he didn't say it quite that kindly. All the teachers were as anxious for school to be over as we were. I was almost excited to take the test just because it had ended our overly awkward conversation.

It wasn't until after my final test, five hours later, that I thought about the dream again. That was because I saw her as I stepped out into the cold air outside, icy rain hitting me in the face like cold daggers. My heart almost stopped when I saw her there.

She was just a few yards away from me, standing still in the middle of a jostling crowd of high school students, excited that the year was finally over. She seemed unfazed by them, just staring at me. Her skin was a pale white that wasn't natural, a deathly pallor hanging over it. Her eyes were bright red and piercing, angry but creepily happy at the same time. Her dark, chocolate hair hung down to her waist, over the black gothic, sleeveless dress. In her arms was a something wrapped in a blood red blanket. She was beautiful, a beautiful that I could never be.

But she was me. Despite how gorgeous she was, she was me. There was something evil about her though, that chilled me. And her neck – just like the me in the dream I had last night, her neck was torn out and destroyed, bloody and wrecked. I took a few steps closer and realized that there was a baby in her arms, wrapped in the blanket.

"Alice," I said, tugging on my sister-in-laws arm. "Alice, do you –"

Before I could finish my question, though, the girl – me, if that's even possible – smirked at me and disappeared. Just like that, she was gone. My blood turned cold.

"Yes, Bella?" Alice said, sounding slightly worried. The expression on my face must have been horrible. "What's wrong?"

"N-nothing," I whispered, scared my voice would crack with fear if I talked any louder. "Let's just go."

Something was seriously wrong with me.

***

**So, if you've made it this far, thanks for reading! I'll be trying to update as quick as I can. Please let me know what you think!**


	3. Chapter 3

There was blood. Everything was red again and there was more blood than I had ever seen, ever imagined possible. More blood than the goriest horror movie could ever hope to accomplish having. But that wasn't the strange part. The blood wasn't the part that scared me, but the fact that I wasn't repulsed and nauseated by the blood was what got to me. I was relishing in the fact that there was so much blood that I was basically swimming in it, deeply breathing in the heady, rusty smell as though it was the most amazing smelling thing ever.

That's what scared me more than anything.

They stood across from me, their dark hoods pulled down over their faces. Black caped billowed around each of them, making it appear as though the whole group was being swallowed by a black cloud of smoke. And they were murmuring something, their voice joined together in a low, buzzing throng of sound. There voices joined together until I couldn't understand what they were saying, but I knew they were talking to me, telling me sinister, awful things that I didn't want to hear.

I started running. That was that there was left to do. Run away from the people in the capes, from the blood. And that's what I did – I ran until I tripped over something sprawled across the rough floor. I picked myself up immediately, scurrying around to see what exactly had tripped me.

It was a body…

A dead body…

It was my Edward.

I screamed. The broken, dead body of the man I loved was lying in front of me, bloody and destroyed. The life was gone from his eyes and his skin had that awful color that you only see bodies get when they're totally drained of blood. And I realized that the blood – all the blood was his. And it was all over me. On my hands, on my mouth, _in _my mouth – sweet and delectable. I had killed him.

I had killed Edward.

***

"Bella, wake up! Wake up!"

I sat up and found myself staring into the green eyes of my angel. He was alive. He was ok and alive! A sob caught in my throat and I threw myself into his waiting arms, wailing.

The dreams had been coming for the last few nights, ever since the first. They were always the same – everything red and covered in blood – but always different. They were getting worse, darker. Tonight had been the first night that I was the monster in my dreams.

"Love," Edward whispered into my hair, "what has been up with you? With these nightmares? Please tell me Emmett hasn't been forcing you to watch horror movies these past few days. I know he tries to guilt trip you, saying you never get to see him and that it'd be good brother-sister bonding, but you know how you get…"

I smiled at this momentarily, thinking of how much Edward's older brother loved scaring me out of my mind, but that smile quickly turned into a sob. I wished I had a reason for these terrifyingly real dreams. I wished I could say they were horror-movie induced nightmares. I wished I could say that I believed I wasn't going crazy.

"Something's wrong with me, Edward," I said, my voice cracking. "Seriously wrong. I think I'm going insane."

"Nothing's wrong with you love," Edward said softly, his lips brushing against my forehead. "Besides, we've always known you were somewhat insane. That's nothing new."

"Ha ha," I laughed bitterly, honestly peeved that he wasn't taking this seriously.

"Don't worry, though, love." I could hear the smile in Edward's voice and knew another jibe was coming. "If it gets too bad – well, you know Carlisle has a padded room in the basement just for times like this. He keeps plenty of spare straightjackets down there. I'm sure we can steal one for you."

"You're hilarious, Edward," I told him but it had worked. I was smiling, quickly forgetting my awful dream.

"Aren't I?" Edward smiled my favorite crooked smile at me before he pressed his lips against mine. Our kiss quickly grew passionate and let's just say we got into it a little more than we should have at three am on a Monday morning, even if the only thing we were going to have to do that day was graduate.

***  
**Thanks so much to everyone who's reading this. Please, please please let me know what you think!**


	4. Chapter 4

It wasn't until later that afternoon that it really sunk in that we were graduating in just a few short hours. Also, that it was really weird that we had a graduation on a Monday night. It was just slightly strange.

Alice held me captive in her bathroom all day, putting painstakingly thorough effort into choosing what I was going to wear under the putrid yellow graduation gown and doing my hair and make up. And while, yes, even I could admit that Alice did a pretty good job on my face, being her Barbie doll wasn't exactly my first choice of how to spend my day, especially after so much sleepless nights and the pounding headache I had.

"Bella, hold still!" Alice whined as she curled yet another tendril of my hair. It seemed like she was curling my hair strand by strand just so that it would take forever. "You're going to make me burn your hair off!"

"Are you almost done?" I asked for the umpteenth time. I knew I was being obnoxious and annoying but I honestly could care less how I looked. I didn't need to look good, especially today. Today was a liberation from the death camp they call high school. People never look good when they're being liberated.

Alice sprayed one last thing onto my hair with a flourish and turned off the curling iron. "You'd think I was shoving bamboo under your finger nails," she said and we both shuddered at that thought. "Well, you're done."

Alice really had found a way to make me look pretty. I stared into the mirror wishing I was one of those girls who naturally this pretty without layers of foundation and eyeliner on their faces.

"Now, this is how you should have looked on your wedding day," Alice said. She would eternally be disgusted by the fact that I had worn sweat pants to elope with Edward.

Edward was waiting for me downstairs. He took my hand as I plowed down the steps, carefully helping me balance so that I didn't fall in the stilettos Alice had had to basically strangle me into. Edward kissed me carefully on the lips.

"Watch the lipstick," Alice hissed from behind me.

Edward chuckled but ignored her. "I've missed you today."

"I blame Alice," I said with a smile.

The next few hours were a blur. The school gym was filled with people. Charlie, my father, was sitting in the back. He waved at me when he saw me walk into the smelling gym. I blushed slightly as I waved back, feeling bad for how little time I had spent with him since I had gotten married. I was going to have to make sure to change that before Edward and I went off to college in the fall.

We were ushered into a line in alphabetical order by the teachers. I was towards the front, behind Edward and Alice, bearing my new last name proudly. People gave me looks, obviously thinking about how I should be towards the back of the line with the S's instead. Edward smiled back at me reassuringly as music played and the valevictorian (the only person in the entire school with a GPA higher than my Edward's) said his speech. Then, Principal Greer started calling out names and the line sauntered forward slowly.

"Edward Cullen…Alice Cullen…Isabella Swa-Cullen," he finished, stuttering over my name.

I reached for his hand with one of my own and my diploma with the other, smiling out to the crowd as I started to make my way off stage.

My heart really did stop this time.

There, sitting in the front row, was me. Everything started to haze over and all I could see were the blinding lights that were aimed at me and her. She was smirking at me, her red eyes bearing into me like daggers. Her neck was still bloody and some of that blood was now dripping all over her neck that was exposed through her low-cut dress. The contrast of blood against her pale, white skin was awful and morbid. She looked down at the baby in her arms briefly and then back up at me to smile a big, toothy, evil grin at me.

"Bella?" Mr. Greer asked and only then did I realize that I had stopped moving. "Are you ok?"

I nodded and hurried off the stage. I looked back at the bleachers and she was still there. She was playing with the baby and sneaking looks at me. No one else seemed to notice the girl with the baby who looked exactly like me. I would think they were ignoring her except for the fact that she was drenched in blood.

Everyone else got their diplomas and we stood in a group, throwing our graduation caps into the air as Mr. Greer announced that we were done with high school. Forever. I kind of added the ecstatic forever on my own but I could tell everyone else was thinking the same thing. I managed to throw my cap half-heartedly but it came back down quickly. Edward excitedly lifted me off the ground and spun me through the air, kissing me.

Everyone was talking and laughing and hugging and kissing. I tried not to think about how I was going crazy as I was attacked with hugs. Angela and Jessica both told me to make sure that we kept in touch. Esme and Carlisle, Edward's adopted parents who both had model-worthy looks, pulled the two of us into a group hug.

"I'm expecting grandchildren soon," Esme whispered in my ear and I rolled my eyes.

Emmett nearly broke my back with his hug while Rosalie glared at me. Jasper shook my hand in his typical, overly formal way and then went to kiss Alice passionately. Finally, there was Charlie. Even though neither of us were all that comfortable with displays of affection, I hugged my dad hard.

"I've missed you, Bells," he told me.

"I've missed you, too, dad," I said, tears in my eyes. "I'm going to make sure to come over more often. Dinner tomorrow? Edward can cook."

Charlie took my bribe and smiled. Believe it or not, Edward could make almost anything and it would taste delicious. He watched way too much of the cooking channel as a kid.

"Sounds good, Bells," Charlie said. "I've gotta go keep the streets of Forks safe now, though. Is it ok if I miss the party?"

"Ugh, the party," I groaned. "I wouldn't force anyone to have to be part of that."

"Ok." Charlie looked relieved, like he almost thought I was going to insist that he come to Alice's superfluous graduation party. She had invited basically the whole town to the Cullen's big, white mansion. "Love you, Bella."

Charlie kissed the top of my head and then left. I had a moment to myself as no one was coming up to hug me or tell me to keep in touch or ask me about my plans for the summer. It was nice. Until someone tapped me on the shoulder.

I spun around, expecting it to be Mike or Eric or Tyler, just a few of the town's boys who thought I was irresistible for some reason (I mean, really? How could _I _be irresistible? It just made no sense). Instead, I found myself staring in a mirror. Only, it wasn't a mirror. It was the girl that had been sitting in the front row, the girl that looked like a more gothic, bloody me.

She smiled at me. This couldn't be real. I had to be imagining it. No one else noticed her. If they had, they would have been freaking out over all the blood there was around her. And that's how I knew I wasn't imagining it. The blood – I could smell all the blood on her. Rust and salt. It was thick in the air around her, around us. The room spun as I got nauseous. Typically, it was because of blood that I got sick but this time I knew this wasn't it. I was about to barf because of the fact that there was something truly evil about the girl, the girl who was me.

She lifted a finger to her lips as though to tell me to be quiet and the baby in her arms let out an unearthly wail.

The next thing I knew, I was in the bathroom over a toilet, Alice holding my hair for me as I threw up. When I was down, I sat on the cold tile of the bathroom, leaning against the walls of the stall.

"Are you ok?" Alice asked me, blatantly worried.

"Yeah. Of course," I said.

"Are you absolutely positive you're not pregnant?"

"Gah, not this again!" I shouted. "I'm not pregnant, ok?"

"Wouldn't it just be worth it to check? I mean, pregnancy tests don't cost that much. It'd just be to confirm you're not – or that you are."

"I'm not pregnant!"

"Bella, are you ok in there?" Edward's voice came through the door.

"Are you ok?" Alice asked me with a probing gaze.

"Yeah, I'll be fine," I said. "I just – I just need a minute. Go tell Edward I'll be right out."

Alice gave me one more long look before shaking her head and leaving. I head her say something to Edward outside the door and two of them walked away. Once she was gone, I totally let myself melt down. I mean, I was literally on the ground of the bathroom, trying not to break into hysterical tears because that would be hard to hide. I couldn't seem to get enough air in my lungs and I was completely scared out of my mind.

What the hell was wrong with me? Was I really going crazy? Was I going schizophrenic or something like that dude in that movie A Beautiful Mind? But then again, what was that whole thing about the fact that people don't know when they're going crazy? Was that true? Was this real then? Had I all of the sudden been transported into some B-rated horror movie that used a couple too many bottles of fake blood and symbolic metaphors? And if so, what did this all mean? I was seeing a ghost of myself for crying out loud! What could that possibly mean was coming?

There were so many questions and no answers. And the biggest question of all, despite what the answers were to all the others, was why me?

****

**Sooooooo, i hope you guys are all liking this. If you've read this far, congrats! Reviews will get me to put up a new chapter faster so review if you want more! Heart, Marlana**


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